MONTREAL — Ever since Martin St. Louis took over as coach of the Montreal Canadiens a little more than four years ago, he has tried to ingrain certain principles into his young team.That young team was losing a whole lot back then, but those principles were being established in the hopes they would pay off once the team was ready for an opportunity like the one it finds itself in right now.The Canadiens are not in the Eastern Conference final by accident; they got here by beating the fifth-best team in the NHL in round one and the fourth-best in round two, only to reach a meeting with the second-best, the Carolina Hurricanes.The Hurricanes also operate according to a set of principles ingrained in them by their coach Rod Brind’Amour, but they have been doing it for much longer, and they are able to execute it almost flawlessly.And one of the main beliefs the Hurricanes operate under is the same as one the Canadiens hope to.St. Louis, from day one in Montreal, has always wanted his team to play on top of their opponents, to apply pressure on puck carriers from far from the Canadiens’ net to make it near impossible to enter their zone and produce offence.No one does that better than the Hurricanes. Maybe one day the Canadiens will be at the top of the heap for playing that way, but they aren’t yet, and they are feeling it in this series they are trailing 2-1 after losing a second straight overtime game 3-2 on Monday, their first consecutive losses of these playoffs.“This whole experience, it’s part of our learning,” St. Louis said. “There’s always learning in failure. We lost tonight. We’ll learn from it.“That team over there’s a good team, very mature. I don’t know if we can match their maturity, but we’re going to have to elevate that.”It is easy to get the sense that the Canadiens were one shot away from winning both Game 2 and Game 3 because they went to overtime. It is even easier to think that when your 101-point captain Nick Suzuki gets a clean breakaway 30 seconds into it and shoots two feet wide.But it was clear St. Louis did not think that.“Not necessarily,” he said. “We created those chances, but we need to create more; 12 shots is not enough.”It is highly unlikely St. Louis will take solace in the fact the Canadiens were retroactively credited with a shot in overtime, giving them 13 in the game. It is still not enough. In the past two games, the Canadiens have registered 12 and 13 shots, two of the three games in NHL playoff history with the fewest shot totals in a game that required overtime.In the day between Game 2 and 3, speaking at the team hotel in Raleigh, N.C., St. Louis outlined the mental challenge the Hurricanes present.